The United Kingdom Gambling Commission has released figures showing increased revenue but declining employment in the gambling sector. Also in the UK, a player has been sentenced for biting an opponent’s ear off following a poker-related argument. 888Live is returning to Austria in 2016, while NYX Gaming will hold its inaugural NYX Poker Series in the run-up to Christmas.

Gambling Yield now over £10 Billion in the UK, but employment declining

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has revealed that the Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) for non-remote, non-lottery commercial gambling amounted to £5.444 billion for the period of April 2014 to March 2015, an increase of 2% over the previous year. Betting (largely sports betting) accounts for the bulk of this, to the tune of £3.25 billion, followed by casinos, which brought in £1.16 billion. The national lottery, meanwhile, made £3.23 billion and all forms of “remote” (i.e. online) gambling put together made £1.45. Putting all these together, gambling in the UK has grown to be worth over £10 billion annually.

At the same time, however, overall employment in the gambling industry has been declining slowly and steadily for the past four years. There are now just under 105,000 people employed in gambling-related professions in the UK, a decrease of over 10,000 since 2011. Casino and remote betting jobs have been on the rise in tandem with growing revenues in those sectors, but are down more or less across the board elsewhere, including in the betting sector, despite its dominant position in terms of gross yield. Hardest hit have been bingo hall employees; there are now only about 70% as many people working in bingo as there were four years ago, although – somewhat surprisingly – the amount of money yielded by bingo has remained essentially unchanged.

Leading the chip counts as of this writing is Pavel Veksler, with just a hair over 1 million. Only two WPT Champions Club members are still standing – Vladimir Bozinovic and Giacomo Fundaro – and both are extremely short-stacked, so it looks like the WPT will find a new champion at the final table on Sunday. One strong contender for that honor will be Steve O’Dwyer, as the #5 player in the world (and #4 Player of the Year) according to the Global Poker Index. O’Dwyer is currently third in chips, with around 600,000.

– An English poker player has been sentenced to three years in prison for biting the ear off of another player following a dispute at the table. The victim, Robert Reed, had earlier declined to fight Salisbury, but the latter jumped him when Reed later went out for a cigarette, and Reed’s apparent lack of involvement in starting the fight surely contributed to what is a fairly tough sentence for Salisbury.

It’s Important To Gamble Responsibly

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